The Quality Council of India plans to cover 26,000 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in the next two years under Zero Defect Zero Effect (ZED) model of which 6,000 would be from defence sector, a senior official said today.

“For two years, we have a target of 26,000 MSMEs out of which 6,000 MSMEs are in defence sector alone which needs to be targeted,” QCI Secretary General Dr Ravi P Singh said on the sidelines of Defence Expo in South Goa.

“During the 12th plan period, government has promised us to give subsidy up to 70-80 per cent depending on what kind of and what size of MSME it is and they will go through this entire exercise of certification,” he said.

Singh said with the new Defence Procurement Procedure recently released by the government, there is a huge opportunity for the Indian MSMEs to contribute to the ‘Make In India’ campaign.

“There is no better tool than ZED to provide them the competitiveness and competence to manufacture not only for the country but for the whole world,” he said.

“The new Defence Procurement Procedure already in place due to which there is a huge amount of procurement that is happening in defence sector,” he said.

“What we expect that all these bigger companies which want to invest in India will have to source their small components from the Indian small and medium industries,” Singh said.

“That is where the model like ZED would be most essential. We will have to prepare same parts and components which the foreign players require. We do understand that India is not competitive in defence manufacturing but once these companies start coming in there is onus on small and medium enterprises to step up, to increase their processes so that there is no defect in parts and components that you are making as well as you don’t impact the environment,” he said.

The QCI during the ongoing Defence Expo launched ZED Maturity Assessment Model which is tailor-made for the companies in Defence sector.

“When Prime Minister spoke about Zero Defect Zero Effect, we took it upon ourselves and we have looked across all the models of quality intervention across the world and we have made very homogeneous, very expansive and very holistic model which covers the best practises of entire world,” he said talking about the ZED model.

“It is a maturity model because we know that we have to hand-hold these MSMEs from one stage to another and than to reach the maximum stage which is world class quality,” Singh said.

He feels that 1.25 million MSMEs are going to be covered with the ZED model in the next five years.

He said, in all the 25 Make in India sector this model is there. “Defence is an additional model and for defence it is strategically very essential to have this kind of model because we cannot afford to have any failures in the defence either in ammunition or equipment,” he said.

The QCI Secretary General pointed out that in the past most of the models were ISO which were quality management system but there was no holistic model. “Over the last decade, India has been able to get to 5,000 MSMEs in all, across all the sectors,” he added.

What is helping the cause of ZED is that ‘Make in India’ has come. Entire eco-system is going to be built around it. If you need to export, you need to have same quality of product which is accepted in the importing countries. That is where ZED kind of model is very helpful, he said.

Singh said ZED in the long run will provide more competitive edge if you adopt it or you will end up building something which may not be required by the industry.

Responding to a question, Singh said currently the QCI is asking government not to make ZED compliance mandatory.

“We are confident that if we have pulls and pushes, it will take shape as a voluntary model. It has to come from within. If you force something, it might give you push initially but it is not a sustainable model,” he added.

Source: The Economic Times